NEW YORK, Aug 24: A Pakistani man was due to appear in court in New York on Thursday, accused of providing a banned Hezbollah-linked television station to viewers in the city, prosecutors said.

Javed Iqbal, 42, allegedly offered to provide an undercover agent from the FBI with satellite broadcasts by Arabic-language Al Manar, according to court documents seen by AFP.

He faces up to five years in jail if convicted of charges under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

A search warrant issued by a New York court says that Iqbal was interviewed at the city’s Kennedy airport in May on returning from a trip to Lebanon and that an FBI agent entered his satellite television store some two weeks later. It was then ensuing in conversations that Iqbal was alleged to have offered broadcasts of the channel.

Al Manar is seen as a mouthpiece of the Lebanese Hezbollah, and was categorised by US authorities in March as a terrorist entity, making it a crime to conduct any business with it.—AFP